Beyond the D-Day monuments: the Normandy coast less traveled

Updated 6:57 pm, Saturday, August 30, 2014

In the sleepy beach town of Hauteville-sur-mer, even in high seasons there aren't the crowds of the popular beaches on the other side of the Cotentin Peninsula.

In the sleepy beach town of Hauteville-sur-mer, even in high seasons there aren't the crowds of the popular beaches on the other side of the Cotentin Peninsula.

Photo: Spud Hilton, The Chronicle

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Strollers explore near the bay in Granville, the largest city along the west coast of the Cotentin Peninsula of Normandy.

Strollers explore near the bay in Granville, the largest city along the west coast of the Cotentin Peninsula of Normandy.

Photo: Spud Hilton, The Chronicle

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The main streets in Coutances are full of tiny bakeries and cafes, stocked with all manner of French delicacies.

The main streets in Coutances are full of tiny bakeries and cafes, stocked with all manner of French delicacies.

Photo: Spud Hilton / The Chronicle

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The Pirou Tapestry is an account of the Normans' conquest of southern Italy and Sicily, created in the 20th century to mimic the style and techniques of the Bayeux tapestry, which the artist studied for six years. less

The Pirou Tapestry is an account of the Normans' conquest of southern Italy and Sicily, created in the 20th century to mimic the style and techniques of the Bayeux tapestry, which the artist studied for six ... more

Photo: Spud Hilton, The Chronicle

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The Cotentin Peninsula is known for it's seafood, particularly muscles. This is considered a light snack at a small cafe in the beach town of Hauteville-sur-mer.

The Cotentin Peninsula is known for it's seafood, particularly muscles. This is considered a light snack at a small cafe in the beach town of Hauteville-sur-mer.

Photo: Spud Hilton, The Chronicle

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The legend of Pirou Castle says that when faced with Viking invaders, the inhabitants turned themselves into geese with a magic book. Because the book was burned, the geese keep returning to the castle, but can't turn back. less

The legend of Pirou Castle says that when faced with Viking invaders, the inhabitants turned themselves into geese with a magic book. Because the book was burned, the geese keep returning to the castle, but ... more

Photo: Spud Hilton, The Chronicle

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Interior architecture in Cathedrale de Notre-Dame, a Norman Gothic cathedral in Coutances built around a Norman Romanesque cathedral that's 200 years older and, for the most part, still intact.

Interior architecture in Cathedrale de Notre-Dame, a Norman Gothic cathedral in Coutances built around a Norman Romanesque cathedral that's 200 years older and, for the most part, still intact.

Photo: Spud Hilton, The Chronicle

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Not far from Coutances' cathedral is the serene Jardin des Plantes.

Not far from Coutances' cathedral is the serene Jardin des Plantes.

Photo: Spud Hilton, The Chronicle

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Visitors stroll through Coutances' serene Jardin des Plantes with the twin towers of Cathedrale de Notre-Dame looming in the background.

Visitors stroll through Coutances' serene Jardin des Plantes with the twin towers of Cathedrale de Notre-Dame looming in the background.

Photo: Spud Hilton, The Chronicle

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Beyond the D-Day monuments: the Normandy coast less traveled

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If the hand-stitched story on the tapestry above the Court Room door is an accurate measure, not all invasions of Normandy are quite the same. Instead of beaches, landing craft and Allied forces, the tapestry tells of swamps, longboats and Vikings.

And the losing soldiers turned into geese and flew away.

The north coast of the Cotentin Peninsula is among the favorite stomping grounds in France for U.S. travelers, almost entirely because of the region’s role in one of the most significant single periods in modern history, the World War II invasion of Normandy.

Cotentin’s west coast, however, as little as 25 miles away, is a geographical blind spot, a stretch of traditional Normandy that is virtually unknown among American travelers, despite Viking-era castles, cliff-hangingFrenchvillages, legions of family-owned pastry shops, cloud-tickling medieval cathedrals and miles of postcard beaches.

Faced with even a vague understanding of the attractions of western Cotentin — vague because the area is as unknown to the major guidebookcompanies as it is to U.S. travelers, apparently — the lack of visitors seemed as mysterious andunexplainableas the residents of the 12th century Pirou Castle magically transforming into a flock of geese.

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Which is how I came to be exploring 50 miles of overlooked French coast, on a quest for Normandy experiences worthy of venturing beyond the D-Day beach circuit, as well as to find out if storming this coast on your own is a reasonable battle plan.

And, maybe, to see if it’s even possible to eat too many French mussels.

Undiluted France

It had been a French consulate official a year earlier who had answered a simple question at a reception.

“Where in your own country,” I asked, “do you love, but that Americans never bother to see?”

We found a map on the back of a brochure, and he quickly pointed at the west side of Cotentin, away from the Allied landing sites. “No one goes here. They go to the D-Day beaches and then to Paris.”

Now I was driving with my wife, Ann, through where his finger had landed, a region of forests, pastures and tiny stone villages, a branch of Normandy so agrarian that satellite photos resemble a layer of confetti left from St. Patrick’s Day.

And invasions (both coming and going) are nothing new. The Vikings vacationed here for a few decades, the British spent half the 100 Years War occupying Coutances, and a local guy named William Duke of Normandy launched the conquest of England from the western Cotentin shores in the 11th century, a venture that changed the last name on his passport to “the Conqueror.”

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If you go

GETTING THERE

We rented a car in Caen, which has plenty of trains daily to and from Paris. Granville is 67 miles from Caen across the base of the Cotentin Peninsula.

WHERE TO STAY

The town of Lessay has only a few minor attractions but offers a few inexpensive hotels, is central along the Cotentin Peninsula’s west coast and makes a convenient base for day trips to the towns described in the article.

Mercure Granville Le Grand Large: 5 rue de la Falaise, 50400 Granville. +33 2 33 91 19 19. www.mercure.com (search for Granville, France). Located on bluff across from the walled city (great view) and a short walk to tourist district. Part of Mercure, a major chain in Europe. Rates start at $115 per night.

There are tourists — plenty of tourists — but most are French and a few Brits (during three days on the west coast, we ran into no other Americans except an expat working at a French chateau), and most of them took the train from Paris to escape the American tourists there.

Because it’s an escape for the French, the western Cotentin doesn’t seem to have been heavily compromised to appeal to global travelers. It is French, and the food, monuments and road signs are the reminders.

More importantly, because D-Day tourism isn’t as big a factor here, it’s easier to see local cultures as they are — for the history, buildings, food and art — instead of just as victims of a World War II occupation who needed liberating.

Granville on high

The serenity of the barely rippling seawater pool on the beach at Donville-les-Bains is a comfortable contrast to the bustle of Granville’s tourist district, where French vacationers (and a handful of Brits) seemed determined to fit as much sightseeing and shopping into their “relaxing” as possible.

We entered town from the east, before fully realizing Granville isn’t divided just into areas but into altitudes. The walled city, Hauteville (literally, “high town”), caps a promontory that towers over the downtown, as well as the cheerful marina and the working port. Most of the city slopes to the south, while Donville-les-Bains and other suburbs (including the boyhood home of designer Christian Dior, now a museum) top the cliffs heading north.

Granville’s role as vacation spot is based in part on its location just 30 miles up the road from guidebook darling Le Mont Saint-Michel, but also because the completion of the Paris-Granville rail line in the late 1800s made it an easy escape for world-weary city dwellers.

At a large traffic circle, we descend into the downtown — and into the mire that comes with a seaside resort town on a summer weekend, driving streets that were intended for horse carriages. The opportunities here are mostly about eating and shopping, so instead we climb up to Hauteville to explore the walled city, including the ancient Notre Dame church and the bluffs pointing toward the channel. While there are no D-Day-related sites here, Granville has its share of World War II reminders, including bunkers and a firing post from Le Mur de L’Atlantique — Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.

From the bluff, British tourists pore over a display that points out the Channel Islands on the horizon (in French), although I look toward the beaches stretching north from Granville — inviting even on a drizzly, windy day.

We drive the streets atop the bluffs and find a stairway to the beach and a pair of seawater pools, Olympic-size tanks that fill during high tides. I imagine that on a sunny day, they mimic the mouthwash hues of the surrounding waters, although today they reflect the quiet torment of the tarnished silver sky. The chilly, algae-tinted water seemed to say, “Dip if you dare.”

None are daring today, although even in the light rain a game of beach bocce has materialized on the low-tide flats, a group of French men and boys rolling steel balls across the ungroomed damp sand. We watch the game for a few minutes, if only to see how throwing technique differs on sand, and we climb back up the bluffs to head north.

Pulling mussels

The gangly French teenager with a hair hedgerow running neck to forehead turns out to be our waiter, although his skills at English are as fatally flawed as mine at French. There just aren’t as many English-speaking tourists taking the road to Hauteville-sur-Mer as do the road to Caen.

Hauteville-sur-Mer is a beach town in the sense that it has one, as well as summer cottages and operators with boats, kayaks and skiffs. Steps from the beach is a bar and cafe that serves cold Mosbrau on tap and local mussels by the helmet-size pot, so we take a seat.

Looking up and down the shoreline, it becomes clear that the multiple exit signs we had seen along the main road that pointed to La Plage all led, essentially, to the same 50-mile strand of golden sand. With rare interruption, between Granville and Barneville-Carteret, “the coast” and “the beach” are one and the same.

Waiting for lunch, we watch an operator on the beach ready his kayaks, Zodiacs, travel-size sailboats and wind-surfing equipment (and a pirate flag flapping from a pole). A four-wheeled buggy-like cycle holding a half-dozen tourists drifts down the street, seemingly powered by laughter and beer, and I consider for a moment that this could be any summer cottage town anywhere.

That is, until the oversize pot of salty, steamy mussels arrives — a challenge before it even touches the table — and across the street at the sailing school, a tall young man steps outside and starts singing loudly in French, to no one or to everyone, a tune he probably learned in a bar. Or from his mother. Or both.

I make it through only two-thirds of the mussels. I consider offering the rest to the sailing-school troubadour, but he’s already gone.

Ancient twin towers

It’s difficult to think of Coutances Cathedral, an 11th century Norman church (that William the Conqueror helped consecrate) with a 13th century Gothic exterior built over it, as the “local parish” in a community of just 9,000 people. Especially when there are two more churches (St. Peter’s and St. Nicolas’) of nearly equal historical value blocks away.

We had parked on the main street leading up the hill that Coutances uses to rise above the surrounding level landscape. Anyone within 20 miles can tell that the cathedral and its 262-foot twin towers are the main attraction here, although once inside the town, I might argue that the dozens of tiny cafes, meat shops and bakeries — all windows full of French foodie porn — run a close second.

The first genuine surprise about a town with this much history and architecture — founded in the third century by Gauls, destroyed by Vikings in 866, held by the English during the Hundred Years War — was that I’d never heard of it. Nor had most of my Francophile colleagues. I had to wonder if the D-Day history circuit didn’t just distract visitors from the rest of the Cotentin Peninsula, but maybe even make it magically invisible.

Having resisted the first dozen pastry shops we passed, I finally duck into a cubicle-size nook in which, I know deep in my heart, every single item tastes amazing. We buy a few square pocket pastries with ham and Gruyere and tuck them away for later.

The second genuine surprise is the sheer size of Notre Dame Cathedral when standing next to it or inside it. After giving up on photos that can’t possibly capture the scale and feel of the combined Norman-Gothic monument, I just wander quietly. Eventually, one of the docents politely herds us outside to clear the way for a funeral. Anywhere else, in a sanctuary this grand, I would assume the casket contained a head of state or regional archbishop. Not in tiny Coutances.

We stroll the streets and alleys, past buildings that span 900 years. (Sixty percent of the city was destroyed in the bombing that followed the Allied invasion, although the cathedral was spared.)

Following the signs, we come to the Jardin des Plantes (Botanical Gardens), the final genuine surprise. Instead of a glorified mini-park with a few rows of roses, this is a sophisticated complex of tree-lined lawns, terraces, intricate float-size flower gardens, and quiet nooks for public art and contemplation.

And, apparently, for eating pastry. We break out the ham-and-Gruyere pockets and a mineral water and enjoy the sunshine and breeze sifting through too many trees to count.

By the seaside

It isn’t until you view Barneville-Carteret from the lighthouse-topped headlands at Cap de Carteret that the town’s three separate personalities sink in. Barneville is the easily walkable petite stone village that dates to Roman times, complete with rough-hewn St. Germain, a Romanesque church on the main square. Carteret covers the marina, fishing port and headlands, and Barneville Plage is the flat, lengthy stretch of bungalow-flanked beach that is the main attraction.

Purely by chance, we manage to experience each of the three. After exploring St. Germain church and the square, and getting lost between Barneville and the beach, I turn the car uphill and north, and eventually stumble on the Carteret headlands. On foot, we follow the ancient, cranky-looking stone wall, from the view north toward the dunes of Hatainville, to just making out the Channel Islands on the western horizon, to Barneville Plage to the south, as well as the beaches beyond it (including one named for aviator Charles Lindbergh after he breached the French coast there on his way to Paris in 1927). Suddenly, the beach is looking pretty good.

Thirty minutes later, we’re sitting at an outdoor table over the beach at a crepe and gelato stand called Carpe Diem, sipping Kronenbourg beer under a blue umbrella. I consider that it’s easy to grasp why so many U.S. travelers want to honor the sacrifice of so many at the D-Day sites, to see the sand there as hallowed ground. I can’t grasp, however, how few will ever see this side of the Cotentin — beaches with less history, but plenty of everything else that makes Normandy what it is.

Magical escape

A dreary rain that didn’t take itself too seriously was falling across the grounds of Pirou Castle, exactly as it should be.

It doesn’t look like Edinburgh Castle or Windsor Castle or even the rook on an expensive chess set. Instead of a storybook fortress, Pirou Castle is exactly what you’d expect for a stronghold started in the 10th century in rural Normandy, first out of wood and later out of stone, as a means to hold off Vikings colonizing the region. Medieval castles are at their best in the rain.

The fortress is said to be the oldest in Normandy (based on the original foundation) and was under siege and changed hands constantly during the Hundred Years War. And yet the site, like Maya cities in the Yucatan, was forgotten and lost to the weeds and vines until the 1960s. The owner who bought it as part of a farm deeded it to a preservation trust that has been restoring it without modernizing.

The drawbridge is gone, but the rough stone arches and the bridge over the moat are enough to set a mood. We join a British tour group, which winds through the ground floor chambers, working its way toward the lone tower left of the original six. We climb stone spiral stairs, then narrow wooden stairs, than a precarious ladder through a trapdoor in the roof. From the highest battlement, I look out over the crude shale roof for Viking invaders (just in case). None. I look for geese. None of those either, except on the tapestry downstairs.

The castle is home to the Pirou Tapestry and is a hero of the tapestry’s narrative. While most of this modern tapestry, created between 1976 and 1992 in the exact manner and methods of the ninth century Bayeaux Tapestry, is about the Norman conquest of Sicily, the embroidered artwork begins with the legend of Pirou.

According to the legend, Vikings who were unsuccessful capturing the castle decided instead to starve out the occupants. One day the castle was quiet, so the Viking invaders waited an extra day to make sure, then climbed the walls. They found an old man, who told them the lord of the castle and his subjects had used a magic book to turn into geese and flee the stronghold. The Vikings had remembered a flock of geese, so they set fire to the castle — including the magic book — to prevent the escapees from transforming back. The geese return each year, but fail to change.

It’s a romantic story, another kind of invasion or Normandy, although I have to believe that if the geese can’t return to human form in this place, it isn’t for lack of magic. We walk back into the light rain, through the courtyard and out past the stone arches. Every so often, I glance up. You never know.

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